Title: “The Great Plate Count Anomaly” That Is No More
Abstract:Chapter 71 "The Great Plate Count Anomaly" That Is No More Gemma Reguera, Gemma RegueraSearch for more papers by this author Gemma Reguera, Gemma RegueraSearch for more papers by this author Elio Scha...Chapter 71 "The Great Plate Count Anomaly" That Is No More Gemma Reguera, Gemma RegueraSearch for more papers by this author Gemma Reguera, Gemma RegueraSearch for more papers by this author Elio Schaechter, Elio SchaechterSearch for more papers by this author Book Author(s):Elio Schaechter, Elio SchaechterSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 April 2016 https://doi.org/10.1128/9781555819606.ch71 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Summary For over a century, microbiologists have been using growth media solidified with agar to culture microbes from environmental samples. Individual cells are easily separated on the solid surface, allowing each cell to grow and divide and form a colony of thousands of clones. We can change the nutrients in the media and physical parameters such as temperature and pH to promote the growth of different microbes. But no matter the trick, we still fall short and can only successfully cultivate in the lab a few microbes of the many that we can see under the microscope in the original sample. Estimates are that we can cultivate roughly one out of every 100 microbes. This is what has been described as "The Great Plate Count Anomaly." So great has our frustration been that we have bypassed the growth step altogether and developed approaches to directly sequence the genomes of the so-called "unculturable" microbes from the environment. We have learned a lot from the sequence information, but our knowledge is still limited by our inability to grow these microbes in the lab. And, as many rightly say, "to really know them, you have to grow them." In the Company of Microbes: Ten Years of Small Things Considered RelatedInformationRead More
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-04-09
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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